Increasingly, computing functionality need not be supported by hardware that is physically co-located with a user utilizing such computing functionality, but rather can be supported by networked computing hardware aggregated into large data centers that are physically remote from the user. Often, the utilization of such computing functionality is referred to as “cloud computing” and can provide users with computing functionality that is typically supported by virtual machines hosted by large collections of computing hardware providing stability, redundancy, and high availability.
A modern data center represents a large financial investment, both in computing device hardware, and also in the hardware providing the relevant infrastructure systems for such computing devices. For example, data centers often comprise climate control hardware, redundant power systems, physical security, and other like infrastructure systems, in addition to the computing device hardware itself, which can comprise thousands of computing devices, storage devices, networking devices, and other like computing device hardware. Often, computing device hardware is housed in physical structures known as “racks”.
Computing devices produce heat as a byproduct of performing computer processing. In datacenters, where many thousands of such computing devices can be co-located within a single space, the amount of heat generated can be very large, and can limit the quantity of processing performed. More specifically, the processors of the computing devices of a data center may not be able to operate at their highest computational throughput levels without exceeding the ability of the data center infrastructure hardware to properly remove the heat that would be generated in such instances. Since computing devices represent a sunk cost, then, to the extent that they can be utilized to perform greater processing, which can, in turn, be sold to consumers, the data center can become more profitable.
One mechanism for addressing the thermal challenges of operating high-performance computing devices, including in data center contexts, can be to immerse some or all of the computing devices into an immersion cooling liquid which can transfer heat more efficiently away from processors and other like heat-generating components of computing devices. Immersion cooling techniques can include two-phase immersion cooling, where the immersion cooling liquid transitions to a gaseous state at temperatures commonly reached by relevant computing components, such as central processing units, graphics processors and the like. The phase change between a liquid and gas, by the immersion cooling liquid, can absorb more heat, and can, thereby, more effectively transfer heat away from the heat-generating components of computing devices. In some instances, a two-phase immersion cooling system can transfer an order of magnitude or more heat away from heat-generating components of computing devices than traditional air-cooling mechanisms.
Unfortunately, immersion cooling mechanisms can be costly to implement. One source of increased cost can be the tank that can house the immersion cooling liquid and the computing devices cooled thereby. Such tanks can comprise pumps, filters and other like immersion cooling infrastructure, some of which can have limited reliability or a limited service life and can, therefore, require repair or replacement that can negatively impact the availability of the entire tank, rending the computing devices cooled thereby inoperable for extended periods of time. Because the repair or replacement of such immersion cooling infrastructure can take substantial time, tanks are typically provided with redundant immersion cooling infrastructure to avoid the aforementioned downtime but at an increased purchase and manufacturing cost.